Review: LED Football

Back in the Dark Ages of video games (ie: Atari 2600 and Intellivision), a whole slew of handheld games came out, most with only red LED lights. They were nothing like the handheld games of today.

TouchGrove is bringing back a classic to the iPod Touch and iPhone: LED Football, which is the updated version of the old Mattel Football handheld game. This emulates the “green” Football 2 version of the game in which you can pass, as opposed to the the original “white” Football 1 game in which you could only run.

Your guy is a bright red LED blip. The object is to move your blip with the four arrows from left to right (home team) or right to left (away team) through the slightly dimmer blips. If you get to the end of the screen, you reappear at the beginning of the screen facing the same defensive blips over and over until you reach the “endzone.”

If you touch one of them or they touch you, you are considered “tackled” and the play is over. There are three vertical columns only, so it’s a bit tight, and most of the time you have to wait for the defensive blips to move before you can advance. In this second version of the game you have the ability to pass to your receiver (flashing red blip) by being in the same row as the receiver and pressing the pass button.

It’s standard football rules: Four downs to get 10 yards, and you have the option to kick, which will either result in a punt or a field goal depending where you are on the field. After a change of possession or a score, the other team will automatically start on its own 20-yard line. (I actually owned this handheld game back in the day and didn’t remember that, but you do indeed start at the 20 at the beginning of the game and at every possession change.)

There is an LED scoreboard that shows the score, the down, yards to go, and the time remaining. The sounds are truly authentic to the original game, and after playing it for a few minutes and putting on Rush’s Farewell to Kings album, it felt like 1979 all over again.

This game is not going to replace Madden, but it plays so true to the original. It is one of the few retro games that felt like I was playing the actual handheld game with a 9-volt in the back instead of an iPhone version. Anyone who has played this in the past will enjoy this throwback football game.

LED Football
Touchgrove
iPhone/iPod Touch
$0.99